Category Archives: technology

These days I have been challenged to integrate technology in a classroom where I am not in charge of all of the technology. In the past, I have run a one-to-one classroom and found it easy to integrate technology all day long everyday. Now that I am sharing with the school and have to very deliberately book technology time for my students, it has changed the way we use it.

I have recently begun using GAFE with my students and with some other groups around the school. With my students in third grade, I found that it was easy to integrate by training up a few students and then using them as my “expert” students to get everyone going.

I find that Googledocs is one of the easiest places for my students to work, as they then have immediate access to their documents at home. In addition, I ask that my students share documents with me when they are ready to for teacher feedback. I can use the comment function in the student document and provide students with an immediate, just-in-time, mini-lesson related to their work and they are able to integrate the feedback immediately without having to copy out their entire document a second time.

This has been a good way to interact with students and I feel that it has improved the quality of their work.

The wonder wall came about quite by accident one day. To be honest, open house was coming up so I hastily threw a hand-made “tableau de découvertes” poster up on the blank bulletin board, not knowing really what I had in mind but knowing that I wanted it to be an organic place for students to ask questions and share answers.

Then after parent night, the board was left alone until we went outside to observe the soundscape around our school. When we came back in we discussed what we had observed with all of our senses. One of the students remarked that she had seen pussy willows. My teaching partner noted that it was impossible for pussy willows to be out because it was the wrong season.

This was the question that constructivists seek: that moment where a learner’s understanding is challenged and the paradigm is forced to shift. I was just so happy to see the moment come so organically.

If it was impossible, how had our student made such an observation? The next time we went outside we looked for pussy willows… And sure enough they were there. Not because they were ripe and had opened on their own but because students had stripped them off the branches and had dropped them on the ground. We took one of the stripped branches and stuck it up on our bulletin board. Next, the questions started to come fast and furious: what would happen to the plant if all of the pussy willows were stripped off? Would birds eat them? Immediately, we needed a place to organize our questions. I stuck up three large sheets of paper for “my questions”, “what I think I know”, things I have learned” and the side of the board was reserved for “ideas that turned out to be mistaken”.

As the weeks passed, students were welcome to add questions and to add answers they thought they already knew. The wonder wall has been quiet over the last few days, but we are ready to give it another boost next week when we begin some student-lead research. My assistant principal @shafinad has shared the brilliant app aurasma with me and I’m so excited to have the students start creating videos that link directly from the wonder wall to videos of their learning! In the past I have created similar “off the wall” projects that linked from QR codes, but I think the Aurasma will be much more dynamic and students will be more inclined to scan one another’s work.

I would love to guide students to linking their work from last year on animals to their research this year. I think it would show them that the work they do never has to be entirely left in the past. In addition, it takes the work out of the four walls of the classroom and into the up-and-coming-learning-commons.

I took a leap today and had my students begin working on Evernote to keep a journal. I am posting the results here even though the result is not as polished as I would like.

I think that Evernote notebooks have the potential to be an education game changer. As I previously noted on Twitter, I had a student with organizational challenges begin using Evernote about two weeks ago. Here, he is able to store pictures of organizers, record audio responses to some work, and write a journal that is generally of higher quality because the iPad is pointing out his mistakes to him (it has been interesting to watch him work – I can here him say “Oh! That’s how you spell (fill in the blank)? I didn’t know that!)

When he was away for a couple of days, I put his missing work directly into his Evernote and he was able to access everything directly from home.

Today’s work was writing a journal. While I would like to get better at doing this, today was a first step. Ten students wrote their journals in Evernote and I was able to access their work from my desk on my iPad. I recorded feedback for them using Explain Everything and sent them a copy back that they can watch and use to make corrections to their work.

I think this will be a powerful tool for students as I can have a virtual 2 minute meeting with each student after they are already gone for the day and make improvements to their work.

Finally, I got the Reflection app installed and working. Really great stuff here. I can have students work in their groups on their iPads and three clicks brings up a dock with a “share” option on it. The students choose that and the computer hooked to the projector will mirror the iPad, sharing whatever they do on their screen at their desk.

Evernote, again, is awesome. I have started using it with a student who has trouble getting organized and so far it’s been like night and day. No more papers to go missing. No more “I left it at home on the kitchen counter”. We also had enormous success with this student’s writing today. He was able to photograph the organizer and write on it with Skitch and save it to his Evernote.

eclicker has an updated app for $14 and I splurged. It’s much streamlined over the old version and a great way to have students review. I had groups of students use the “host” version (eclicker presentation) to write multiple choice, true and false, and open question questions that they will share with peers at the next science lesson. The app, brilliantly, allows users to bring in image files and is so easy to figure out I had kids up and running in minutes. The “audience” version (free) allows students to buzz in their answers all at the same time (class review) or at their own pace (could see using this for quizzes).

I promised my admin that if an iPad 2 made an appearance in my classroom, I would dedicate my next blog post to all the cool stuff it could do, so here it is.

First, I want to note that the “cool factor” isn’t really a factor; yes, the iPads are cool, but I think that if they don’t enhance the learning in the classroom then they aren’t worth the investment.

In addition to what we have already been doing with the iPad1s, the iPad2 has pushed the creation of content light years from where it was. We know that students are already big consumers of content, but how do we make them content producers too?

Building a camera into the technology makes it really intuitive.

So far, I have used it for enrichment with a student who is already weeks ahead on his novel study. In addition to creating a traditional book report, he is in the middle of creating a book trailer with iMovie. The students are practically fighting each other for the next chance to film a book trailer, but my criteria is that their traditional book report be done first and that it be well done. I hesitate to include the movie right now, because it is a work in progress but I think it is valuable to see what is being done, and as I tell my students, creative work is hard to share because we are opening up our hearts to criticism, but criticism often makes our work better. I met with this student about his video and he sees where he will improve it. I look forward to sharing the finished version when it is done.

For organization. With 25 students in my regular room and 31 students in my math room, organization is key. I currently have one student (on a rotating basis) every last recess who gets to access the classroom website via the WordPress app and update the daily homework. Students who are absent check the website from home or upon their return and get caught back up.

It has been used to green the classroom by making worksheets digital. This being said, I don’t think digital worksheets are the best way to learn, but sometimes they are an easy way to reinforce a skill set.

It has been used to share as students work in small groups on their iPads and then share to the projector via air sharing.

It has been used to communicate as all of my contacts are loaded into it and I can easily create distribution lists for newsletters and quick communications with parents regarding child progress.

The technology cupboard has been an evolving project, but I seem to have found a solution that works:

The cupboard has three dish racks from the dollar store, the top rack being for 9 keyboards, the middle being for 10 iPads, and the bottom being for 10 iPods. The bottom rack also houses 2 small tackle boxes: 1 for earbuds and 1 for mics for the iPods.

I am now a classroom teacher (and have been for 9 years or so) and a mother to a school-aged child in three after-school activities and I am finding it very difficult to stay on top of everything. As a teacher, I have dates and paper flying at me from every direction and as a Mom, I am on the receiving end of all that paper. My solution is technology.

1. Email newsletters and requests to parents. It appears directly in their inboxes, often with a link that parents can just click to add dates to their calendars.

2. Scan paper with my phone as soon as it comes home. I can search for a digital document with a few clicks, while a paper document goes missing easily.

5. EVERNOTE! Love! Really! Great place to sort and keep student work, notes, reminders, etc! Also started one for kid #1, because while I love all the work he brings home, where should I put it?

6. Keeping absent students up to date can be a challenge. I find it easiest just to run the correct number of copies of my calendar for absent students, though I would like (maybe with older students?) to keep them on track by having them subscribe to the calendar on their devices.

7. Keep calm and carry on! I think I’m busy now!? Wait until kid #2 is also in school and activities!

I just happened to be resyncing my ipods this morning so I had a chance to go through my apps again when a colleague asked for some advice on some good apps. I thought I would also post here for parents who often ask for what apps are worth the investment. The following is a list of apps I would be hard done by to work without:

Pages: Just a word processor, but it works great for students who prefer to type. I also have a couple of students whose handwriting I have a hard time reading and Pages means that they can communicate their ideas easier.

Dropbox: easy way to get documents from my computer to their device. Love it. I use it with my guided reading program. Most of my books come from Reading A-Z and they open seamlessly.

iBooks: This is where the reading A-Z books open to. It looks just like the paper book without the wasted paper. Have also invested in a few books from iBooks and the kids can highlight and make notes as they read.

Dictionaries: Some are a little pricey, but they are by far the best investment I have made: Collins, Multi, Robert (dixel) Meriam Webster, Bescherelle). My students LOVE looking stuff up that was like pulling teeth to get them to do before. Writing and reading have improved TONS just by having these resources.

Tumblebooks: This is less for my own students, but they read them with their buddies. My four year old loves them and they highlight the words as they read along.

Explain everything: Allows you to import an image and will record sound and drawing as you explain. I haven’t used this with students yet but I want to use it with math evals. I have created a couple of math lessons with this that students can refer back to when they need support.

Evernote: just a great way to organize notes

Chalkboard: Good way for students to reason through math.

Math tutor and World Maths: Good drill and practice

LeaderPost: Kids use for current events. Good for distilling an article down to a paragraph or two.